Joe Comartin

[Criminal Code, October 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-49 would make as crimes three additional provisions. First, it would make trafficking in human beings a crime. It is amazing that it is not one already. Second, it would be a crime if anyone were to profit from trafficking. Third, it would be a crime to withhold documents, such as travel documents or identification documents.

The bill is designed to deal with what can only be classified as a horrendous crime and a horrendous set of circumstances that is besetting us worldwide. We are being told, particularly by the United Nations, that crimes of this nature are growing in number.

Until a few years ago when this became very apparent, we had believed that slavery in all of its forms had been eradicated. We certainly think of the steps that were taken back in the 1800s and the role Canada played in outlawing slavery in Canada.

I was recently at a testimonial for a husband, who was an escaped slave from the United States, and his wife. We unveiled a plaque in the west end of the city as a testimony to the work they had done around that period of time, that their predecessors had done in Canada and the work that they had done in the United States to bring what we believed was an end to slavery on this continent.

We were all shocked when we found out that there are all too many cases of people being indentured in one form or another, intimidated, threatened, assaulted, and in some cases even killed, as part of this type of crime. The incidents are largely generated by organized crime operating in gangs right around the globe.

We are late in terms of responding to this. We are doing so as a result of the protocol which we along with a large number of other countries signed at the UN in 2000, and which was ratified in 2002. The protocol is to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially the trafficking in women and children. It is accurate that women and children are mentioned because they tend to be victims of this crime in significantly larger numbers than men are. We are responding to that finally in this bill.

As we heard in the debate so far, all parties will be supporting the bill. It may be one of the few bills that gets through this House with unanimous support, and rightfully so.

I want to address most of my comments today to what the bill does not do and what we as a legislature have to look to do.

The protocol I mentioned a few moments ago does not talk just about defining the crime, condemning the crime, and putting in place enforcement to fight the crime. It also talks about our responsibility as a nation to deal with the victims of the crime. We have not done that in this country up to this point.

The primary thing we have to be looking at, and it is really the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration who has to take on this responsibility, is what we do with the victims of this crime who have come in from offshore. We are a focal point to some degree for these victims to be used in Canada in this way. However, Canada is also used as a conduit and probably larger numbers of people are trafficked through Canada into the United States.

On a regular basis we do catch some of the criminals and a significant number of victims. Our pattern now is to deport the victims back to their country of origin, oftentimes into a set of circumstances that have not changed at all since they were first victimized. They are threatened and intimidated again and the same thing happens to their families and friends because of the strength of the organized criminals in those countries and the lack of proper law enforcement to protect them.

I recently saw a documentary from England on this point. England is beginning to identify repeat victims. The victims are found and the criminals are charged. As is done here, the victims are sent back to their country of origin and go through the same thing. The victims are brought back into the criminal system, smuggled back into England and the victimization continues.

We should not be part of that. We need amendments to our immigration legislation to deal with victims whom we have identified clearly as victims. If they are to continue to be victimized, we should not be sending them back to that country. As I said earlier, the protocol which we have ratified calls on us as a nation to take steps to prevent that from happening and to bring our laws into line with humane treatment of those victims.

The protocol also recommends that we provide proper benefits. This would be for the victims in the country who are generated from within this country. There are a significant number. Particularly within the sex trade, victims are not voluntarily recruited, but are recruited in a non-voluntary forceful fashion. They are recruited into the system by the gangs and are victimized in this country.

We need to have in place regulations and resources to deal with the situation when they are identified as victims. This oftentimes means extensive counselling because of the great deal of physical and sexual abuse they have suffered. The legislation does not address that point. It is one which the government should address.

My final point and something on which I believe we should be working is a more forceful position on the international scene. It is beyond our immediate control, but it is almost a moral obligation that we should say to the countries that do not have sufficient law enforcement that they have go begin to do that. We are conveying a message. We are saying to the international community that we will meet our responsibilities, but we also have to say to the international community, specifically to those countries that are not carrying out their responsibilities, that are not protecting their own citizens from this type of abuse who are being recruited non-voluntarily into the system that they have to start doing that.

We may have to move to an even stronger position and in some cases suggest sanctions. Do we reduce our cultural ties or our trade ties with some of these countries until they respond and prevent their own citizens from becoming victims?

We have taken a step forward. I have to say perhaps with some cynicism that it is not nearly as big a step as we have heard from some of the other speakers particularly on the government side, but it is a step forward. It is one that is a bit late. We probably should have done this several years ago in order to meet our responsibilities internationally. We have now accomplished part of the goal that has been set in that protocol, but we are not all the way there. There is still a substantial amount of work that has to be done, particularly in the immigration area.

I would encourage the government to say that we have made the first step, and let us move to fully protect the victims of those crimes.

[Criminal Code, October 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, like the other parties, the NDP will be supporting the bill. We are pleased to do so because of the signals that it would give and some expansion of legislative authority for police officers who would be enforcing it.

However one of the reservations we have with the bill is that, as we know, a good number of the individual criminals, as well as the victims, are coming from other countries, that the source of the problem is coming from a country offshore and is coming through our territory often times for these people to be trafficked into Canada, but more often to be trafficked into the United States with us being a conduit. The real problem in the vast majority of cases is that we need to get back to those countries of origin and press them to do more to regulate this crime and prohibit this crime in those countries.

I wonder if the minister could address what we are doing as a country to in fact try to press those countries to have a better performance.

[Automobile Industry, October 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the speech was not worth the paper it was written on because we have heard it so many times before with no action.

Similarly, that is the case with the unemployment figures that came out today. There were 8,000 more jobs lost in the month September in manufacturing and thousands of those were within the auto sector.

We have been asking the government, literally for years, for an auto policy. Where is it?

[Passports, October 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it has been more than a year since the United States Department of Homeland Security announced the western hemisphere initiative. It is a simple enough proposal. It is simply going to require anybody entering the United States to have a passport. The effect of this on Canadians and Canadian economic sectors is going to be quite devastating.

Only 20% of Americans have passports. It costs a family of four about $400 U.S. to acquire passports. The people who cross over the border at my riding to come for recreational, sports and cultural activities are simply not going to put that money out. It is going to cost the economy in Canada literally billions of dollars, for instance, in the tourism and hospitality industry. Eighty per cent of the visitors to the casino in Windsor are from the United States, most of them coming over from Detroit and Michigan for day visits and overnight visits.

The Canadian tourism industry has been very strong in supporting this initiative to fight—

[Spirit Drinks Trade Act, October 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Bill S-38 is really the combination of some trade wars, if I can put it that way, and some very difficult negotiations.

The bill has to be seen as a definite improvement over the prior situation we had. We were part of the problem, if I can put it that way. We have also been very much part of the solution to the international trade problem that the bill seeks to rectify.

The bill develops and implements a system whereby both wines and hard liquors can be regulated at the international level to reduce conflict and to have a system of mediation arbitration that will allow for future conflicts to be resolved amicably with minimum impact on the industry.

A good number of Canadians are aware of the conflict we had with France over the use of the term “champagne”. The Champagne region of France is very protective of the use of that name. This agreement, which is actually encompassed in an international agreement protocol with a large number of the developed countries in the world, the European Union in particular, would protect the use of the term “champagne” exclusively to the Champagne region.

The positive side of this is that we have similar designations that we want protected. I come from an area of the country that has both distilleries of some long standing, more than 100 years, and wineries that are much newer. In both cases, there will be protection for those industries, so the distilleries will now have a designation of Canadian rye whisky that no one else will be able to use. We do have a distinct line of products that again go back well over 100 years in this country. That will now be protected.

Similarly, ice wine will be protected. It is a great product coming out of Canada. We produce more of that product than anybody in the world by far and we also do it better than anybody in the world by far. In both cases, those will be protected.

The other protection that this will provide is geographic designation. For instance, the wineries in the Okanagan, the Niagara Peninsula, my area, the north shore of Lake Erie, will either now be protected under this legislation or will be in the future. As we say that sparkling wine comes from the Champagne region of France, we will be able to say that there is a region of wineries in the Niagara Peninsula and the wine is from that area. That again is crucial to those industries, the wine industry in particular, that we have this type of protection.

We have had a long battle, particularly with the French, but with other European countries, of getting our ice wine into their region. I remember, and I am trying to be diplomatic here, the arrogance I encountered when I was in the Champagne region a few years ago. I have to say that was not a perk of my position. I had actually won the trip shortly before I was elected in 2000 at a fundraiser.

I thought it was a clear signal for a lot of large l Liberals. I think it was forecasting the election that came about a month later in which I took the seat from a sitting Liberal. I did ultimately go on the trip the following summer. I was in the Champagne region and met with one of the executives of the company that had sponsored the trip for the charity in my region.

I was talking to him about ice wine and how significant it was, and I have to mention, even though I have a francophone background, that certain arrogance of the French when it comes to their long-standing pride in their wineries. The executive was sort of dismissing and pooh-poohing our ice wine, so when I got back to Canada I sent him a bottle. I want to note that he was good enough to acknowledge that it was a product well worth consuming.

I made a little penetration for the industry at that point, but the fight continued. Now we have finally resolved it. Our ice wines are getting into Europe and will get into Europe in much larger volumes over the next decade, which will be a big boost to our industry.

Coming back to the bill, let me note that this legislation is very important. It protects both the distilleries and the wineries in Canada. As a result of this legislation and all the hard work that has been done, profitability and new jobs will be brought to these industries. They are growing industries that we should be doing everything we can to support.

[Criminal Code, September 28th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-53. This legislation has come up in the justice committee in a variety of ways over the last several years and certainly in the last year that I have been my party's representative on the committee. In the course of reviewing this proposed legislation and some of the provincial legislation where there is a corresponding jurisdiction, it is obvious we have to be careful about how we use the legislation once it is in force.

From that perspective, my party supports the principle of the bill, as do all parties in the House. The basic principle is that proceeds of crime should be forfeited and that the Crown should not have to prove what are proceeds of crime using the criminal standard, but rather using the civil standard. Rather than having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the gains were from criminal activity, the prosecutor would only have to establish a reasonable belief that there was a gain. The onus would shift to the convicted person to establish that the assets, the cash or whatever the assets are, were not received as proceeds of a crime.

There is a jurisdictional issue here. Manitoba and Ontario both have legislation that deals with the proceeds of crime. We have to be very careful that we do not further complicate the receipt of these assets by the Crown by overlapping jurisdictions. For that reason, when the bill goes to committee, as it obviously will from the support it has received, that will be one of the issues that will have to be addressed. Hopefully, we will hear from provincial attorneys general or their representatives with regard to their position on the bill.

There is one that gives me greater concern and I have expressed this to my confreres on the committee. I have heard from the Canadian Bar Association and other legal groups. They are concerned about the reverse onus applying to assets that are mixed with those of other individuals.

The commercial wing of the Canadian Bar Association used the example of a person who was in a business relationship and unbeknownst to that person, one of the partners or associates had been engaged in organized crime activity and some of the money invested in the firm had come from those activities, but the person was an innocent third party. That person would be faced with the Crown moving against an asset in which the person had an interest. It is important that we build in protections for that business partner. I believe it is possible to do that without undermining the effectiveness of the legislation, but the legislation as drafted does not address this point, at least not to my satisfaction.

The second area where we run into this is with respect to family assets. The immediate stereotype involves someone in a full time relationship with another person. We assume that individual would know if the other person was engaged in organized crime or drug activity, the two criminal areas that the clauses of the bill control, but that in fact is not the case. It is not unusual for family members—and it does not necessarily mean a spouse or a partner; it may be a more extended family member—with joint assets with the person who has been convicted of an offence to have no knowledge that the asset was obtained by way of proceeds from crime. We need to be sure that we protect those innocent third parties.

There is one final point that I want to make, and this came up in a completely different context. The commissioner of the RCMP was before the committee, and I have to say that my memory is fading on this point as I cannot remember if he was before the justice committee or the subcommittee on public security. He raised concerns about police forces becoming dependent on the proceeds of crime. Where these funds go is also very much an issue.

Commissioner Zaccardelli was very clear that he felt it was inappropriate for any police force in this country, and I think he would probably say anywhere in the world, to become dependent as the recipients of the proceeds of crime once they are forfeited to the Crown. That is another issue that very much has to be addressed, with regard to the role that the crown attorneys and the police forces would play at the local level. That needs to be addressed.

Along the same lines, we do need to hear from the provincial attorneys general, at least some of them who have corresponding legislation.

I believe those are all my comments. We will be very much supportive of this bill going to the committee. I hope the committee will be able to deal with it in an expeditious manner and have it back before the House in short order with the proper protections built in.

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2005]

Quite frankly, I have mixed feelings about that, Madam Speaker.

It was interesting when Bill C-2, the child protection bill, was working its way through the justice committee. We heard from a number of police officers who worked directly in the field, and prosecutors. I remember one from Toronto in particular. His entire career for the last 10 years or so was dealing with crimes against children particularly and trying to use the existing sections of the Criminal Code which talk about exploitation in the relationship of the two people involved in the sexual contact. He was very negative on his ability and the ability of the criminal justice system to gain convictions when we use terms like exploitive.

Our courts historically, going back through the British criminal justice system, have not been good at defining it, interpreting it and applying it so that we end up with convictions. I am a bit concerned about some of the wording that we have used in the bill. There is no question that in a number of these cases the relationship clearly is exploitive. In others it is simpler than that. It is slavery. It is slave labour that we are talking about. I cannot help but wonder if we could not make the wording somewhat clearer in those cases.

In the sex trade cases it is much more difficult. However, when people who work in the garment industry in New York City have been smuggled through Canada to get there, whether it is through Buffalo or Windsor, when we see that happening, it seems to me we can simply say that this is a form of slave labour. Perhaps we should be using that kind of terminology.

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I do not think there is anyone in the House or any political party in the country that does not share the values that see trafficking in human beings as absolutely abhorrent. Does the bill go far enough in expressing those values? I am not sure. On the other hand, I do not believe there is any Canadian who would suggest that any member of the House and any Canadian does not see this conduct as abhorrent, and a value, if that is what we are expressing of Canada in wanting to prohibit this, wanting to get to the very root of it and wanting to root it out so that we are never faced with it.

I am not sure there is much more that Canada needs to do at the national level. I am much more concerned about our lack of activity at the international level. We need to play a more forceful role.

If I left the impression that trafficking does not go on in Canada, I did not mean to do that and I do not think I did. We know there is some of it here, but the vast majority of these cases come in from offshore. There is some trafficking in human life here in Canada, but it is very small, according to all the reports that I get. The emphasis has to be at the international level.

By passing the bill, if we need to communicate to doubters in the international community that we are serious about dealing with this issue, fine. It is one of the reasons that we should pass the bill.

The real work that needs to be done here, as I said earlier in my address, is with our security services and foreign affairs. They need to speak forcefully to those countries that allow what is oftentimes corruption to go on in their countries with regard to the trafficking in human beings.

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-49 comes out of a reality which I suppose none of us really want to accept.

I always think that I am optimistic in my viewpoint of humanity and progress in the world. One of the points I always make in that regard is that we conquered slavery, slavery that was part of any number of institutional and government makeups from time immemorial. We beat that one. We progressed. We outlawed slavery right across the world. Unfortunately, when we come to the question of human trafficking, the reality is that we have not. There still is a small part of the world, individuals mostly involved in organized crime, who are engaged in what in effect is slavery. There is no other way to look at it.

When I was looking at Bill C-49, I thought, do we really need this bill? There are provisions within the Criminal Code that would deal with what oftentimes is kidnapping, hostage taking, assaults, and more serious violent crimes against individuals. When we look at the scope of the problem, the ultimate conclusion we have to draw is that we do need the bill.

I cannot help but bring this home to my own riding. We have a major crossing in Windsor and Tecumseh and Essex County. In the last five to seven years we have had a series of incidents of trafficking in humans.

We so often hear about young women in particular, and sometimes young men but almost always young women, who are being trafficked for the purpose of the sex trade. But there are others who appear to be used to provide cheap slave labour in the garment industry, the farming industry, which is all in the U.S. There are even people in the service industry, in restaurants and hotels. These people work at way below minimum wage in working conditions that oftentimes are horrible. They are doing so because of threat to their personal safety and oftentimes threats to their family members in their country of origin. We have seen that.

We have had some tragedies in Windsor as a result of this type of crime. There is a train tunnel that crosses between Windsor and Detroit. In the last five to seven years I think there have been three deaths as people were being smuggled through the tunnel. We think at least on one occasion it was one of the smugglers who was killed. The other two were victims of these crimes.

We have seen from some of the victims who have been apprehended that they come from all over the world. They come from Asia, China, Vietnam and India.

As we heard earlier from the Bloc member, a large number of people, especially young women, come from the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Some come from the Middle East. Interestingly enough a number of people come from Central and South America. They come up to Canada usually by boat along Canada's shores and then they are smuggled into the United States as what in effect will be slave labour.

There is no question about the problem. We heard from the parliamentary secretary the figure of 700,000 people a year that are trafficked. I have heard figures as high as a couple of million. The problem is there. Canada is one of the countries that is a recipient of this trade, mostly as a conduit into the United States. We have to deal with this problem.

Turning specifically to the bill, we have to ask the question, does it properly address the creation of new crimes? It makes sense to make the offence of human trafficking a specific crime. It would be much easier for our prosecutors and our police forces to obtain convictions if there was a specific charge.

Similarly, the additional charge that is being created which would make receiving a material benefit a crime under our Criminal Code makes sense. That one is often very difficult to establish. It may be taken into account in the sentencing, but right now, simply by showing that somebody has trafficked in humans, perhaps in the form of kidnapping or hostage taking, and then trying to prove that it is a separate crime because one has received a material benefit does not exist in our Criminal Code. The creation of the additional charge makes sense.

Often the victims' passports, travel documents, visas, and personal identification documents are removed from them as another means of control. By creating that specific offence, as is done in this bill, it would attack that conduct and convert it into a serious criminal offence punishable by what I consider to be fairly severe penalties.

I suppose I am speaking not only to the other members of the justice committee who will be reviewing this bill but also to the Canadian people more specifically when I say that one does have to be careful. The bill has significant limitations in terms of how it would be used. In order for us to comprehend that, we have to understand the nature of these crimes.

The vast majority of these crimes are perpetrated by organized crime around the globe. Because of the nature of the traffic in this country, a great deal of that organized crime, and in particular the ringleaders of those crime syndicates are not here in Canada because the crime originates elsewhere, for example, in the former Soviet Union, in Vietnam, or in China. It is in the country of origin where the crime originates. That is where the organized crime head pins tend to be situated. A great deal of the traffic that goes on here is by underlings. I will not say that for the biker gangs which we know are involved in the trafficking in the sex trade. We know that a number of those principals are here in Canada. The bill, if passed into law, would be useful in getting at them. What we and the Canadian public have to appreciate is that we will not get at the kingpins who are elsewhere, whether they are in the United States, in Europe, or in Asia. We will not be able to get at them with this bill.

We do need to take a more proactive position internationally on combating crime at its source. At least since the second world war we have done a reasonably good job of interacting with Interpol in dealing with crimes that are coming out of Europe. We have not been nearly as successful in other parts of the world. That is something we need to work on.

I do not think it can be done with legislation. It is one of those things where as parliamentarians we like to think we can resolve all problems. Maybe the Conservatives do not believe that, but I think the rest of us from time to time think we can resolve all problems by passing laws in this House. This is one of those times when it is clear it is not. This problem is only going to resolve itself, and I say that probably in the majority of cases, by getting to the source back in the countries of origin. That means international cooperation with governments across the globe.

It also speaks to another point. I want to raise the issue of terrorism and the amount of effort we have put into combating that. We have learned a lot about how to prevent incursions into Canada, as the Americans have in the U.S., those ideas, those thoughts and those enforcement mechanisms that we have developed to fight the agent who is coming into Canada on a clandestine operation or the terrorist bent on committing a serious crime. We have become much better at getting at that.

We have not done the same at stopping the flow of human traffic, but we have learned. We can apply those same new thoughts, principles and mechanisms to help fight human trafficking, to stop it from happening in Canada.

We can only do that with international cooperation with police forces around the globe. A good deal is being done at the UN at this time. We have to insist that more be done by countries that look the other way when young women are trafficked out of the former Soviet Union or young workers out of China, Vietnam or India. When governments look the other way, when local police forces and local enforcement agencies look the other way, we have to call them on it. We have to tell them that this problem which originates in their countries is being foisted on us and we are prepared to deal with it here, but we should not have to deal with it, that it should be stopped before it gets to our shores. A great deal of work needs to be done on this issue by our foreign affairs department and through our security services internationally.

I would like to make one more small point with regard to Bill C-49. I have drawn this issue to the attention of the parliamentary secretary. One of the clauses in the legislation is probably going to be redundant, if it is not already, in that it has already been dealt with in Bill C-2, the child protection act which passed in the House and the Senate and is waiting final implementation. There are a couple of other technical matters in Bill C-49 which I have some concerns about as well.

The NDP will be supporting this bill subject to those minor changes, recognizing that it is not a panacea. It is not going to resolve half of the problems we are faced with in this country with respect to human trafficking. Our government has to do more at the international level to effectively combat this problem.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, unfortunately, I only have a short period of time. My colleague from Burnaby worked very hard in the committee to get Bill C-38 to the House. I think it is fair that we are all accused from time to time of using too much passion in this debate, but it is a passionate issue.

We have a history when we have dealt with issues as controversial as this. I hope over the next decade and generation that we will come to realize that this did not imperil marriage in our country, it reinforced it. I hope all people approach it that way.